Published Scholarly Books

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PUBLISHED BOOKS:

1. The Dialectics of Late Capital and Power: James, Balzac and Critical Theory. 1 July 2007. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK). This tome conceptualizes the vanguard concepts of ‘un-power’ and of ‘un-money’ and illumines the relational configurations and dialectical connectedness between various types of capital and power (including, but not limited to, the complicity of the cultural form of the novel with social mechanisms of power) by engaging with selected narratives by Henry James and his grand literary model, Honoré de Balzac.
   Dust jacket: a Georg Jensen designed silver bowl from 1912.
   ISBN 1–84718–226–7
   220 x 150 (mm)
   xviii + 312pp. 1 ill.
   Hardback
   UK: £34.99, US: $52.99.
   Backcover endorsements from: 1) Stephen A. Erickson, Professor of Philosophy and the E. Wilson Lyon Chair of Humanities, Pomona College 2) Alision Finch, Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Churchill College, University of Cambridge 3) Henry B. Wonham, Professor of English, University of Oregon.A review 2015:http://www.graat.fr/review_roraback.html

   Gerardo Del Guercio, York College, The City University of New York

2. The Philosophical Baroque: On Autopoietic Modernities. 23 March 2017. Brill (est. 1683) (Leiden, The Netherlands; Boston, USA). From the flyer: › Hardback (xvi + 295 pp. 3 ill.) › ISBN: 9789004323278 › List price: €110 / $132 › Language: English › Literary Modernism, 2 › Imprint: BRILL In his pioneering study The Philosophical Baroque: On Autopoietic Modernities, Erik S. Roraback argues that modern culture, contemplated over its four-century history, resembles nothing so much as the pearl famously described, by periodizers of old, as irregular, barroco. Reframing modernity as a multi-century baroque, Roraback steeps texts by Shakespeare, Henry James, Joyce, and Pynchon in systems theory and the ideas of philosophers of language and culture from Leibniz to such dynamic contemporaries as Luhmann, Benjamin, Blanchot, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, and Žižek. The resulting brew, high in intellectual caffeine, will interest all who take an interest in cultural modernity—indeed, all who recognize that “modernity” was (and remains) a congeries of competing aesthetic, economic, historical, ideological, philosophical, and political energies. R E V I E W S : “Erik Roraback’s The Philosophical Baroque: On Autopoietic Modernities is a great book that will engage an energetic and important subfield of scholarship.”— William Egginton, The Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University, author of The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo) Baroque Aesthetics (Stanford University Press). For more information see https://www.brill.com/limo A review 15 February 2018https://journals.openedition.org/erea/6147

   By William Egginton, The Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, The Johns Hopkins University 

3. The Power of the Impossible: On Community and the   Creative Life. Iff Books, Winchester, UK / Washington DC, USA, 2018.  X + 384 pp. 3 ill. iff-books.com
   Paperback | ISBN: 978–1–78535–149–5 | $29.95  |  £17.99 | 8.5×5.5 inches 216x140mm x + 384 pp.
   e-book | ISBN: 978–1–78535–150–1 | $23.99  |  £13.99 The following backcover endorsements appear on the work:“Learned, exigent, original, and timely, Erik Roraback’s Community and the Creative Life presents authoritative readings of what important theorists from Spinoza to Bataille, Blanchot, Nancy, Žižek, and others have had to say about community and the individual, with sections along the way on how those theorists might lead us to approach work by Henry James, James Joyce, Ralph Ellison, Dante Alighieri, and, surprisingly, the great tennis player, Ivan Lendl. Roraback also develops on the basis of his theorists his own persuasive concept of an impossible/possible global community yet to come that would facilitate individual creativity as well as contest the repressive hegemony of finance capitalism and technology, especially digital technology.”—J. Hillis Miller, The University of California at Irvine.“A spirited, luminous romp through theory, literature—and professional tennis! This original, unorthodox study illuminates our current crises of community formation and creativity in ways unexpected but necessary.” —Robert Appelbaum, Chair and Professor of English Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden    A review 15 December 2021https://journals.openedition.org/erea/12764

   by Ian James, Professor of Modern French Literature and Thought, Downing College, University of Cambridge